Various mechanisms exist for reducing power consumption of a platform. Standard technology for power management may be specified, for example, in Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) version 5.0, which may be found on the public Internet at URL www-acpi-info (note that periods have been replaced with dashes to avoid unintentional hyperlinks in this document). ACPI is the standard many computer systems currently use for power management and is used to describe how the system looks to the operating system.
Power management capabilities enable a platform, both at component and system level, to change its operating state to use less power and to resume normal operations. These modes of operation are often referred to as sleep and wake modes. A number of events trigger a platform to transition to a low power state or to transition from a low power state to a more active state. In prior art solutions for desktop and laptop devices, limited input/output (I/O) device actions trigger such event—i.e., moving a mouse, pressing a key on the keyboard cause a platform to transition to an active state from a sleep, or low power, state.
Handheld mobile computing devices such as smartphones and tablet computers are designed to have a reduced volume to comply with expected user form factor. As a result, these types of devices typically have limited I/O devices; for example, I/O devices for such mobile computing devices may be limited to a touch screen display interface and a limited about of buttons on the bezel. In most handheld computing devices, the touch screen display is deactivated in low power states in order to conserve power. Thus, solutions are needed to enable a user to “wake” a system from a sleep state using other means.
Descriptions of certain details and implementations follow, including a description of the figures, which may depict some or all of the embodiments described below, as well as discussing other potential embodiments or implementations of the inventive concepts presented herein. An overview of embodiments of the invention is provided below, followed by a more detailed description with reference to the drawings.